Help with 'ignore lowest' rule in Gradebook?

I am using the 'ignore lowest' in several assignment groups. For example, I allow students to drop one lowest exam score (out of five). Recently, I discovered a couple of students had cheated during an online exam. Part of the penalty is that the zero they received (manually entered to override the auto-graded score) is no longer eligible to be one of the exam scores that gets dropped (so that the zero will count toward their final course grade).

Q1: Is there a way that this can be managed in the Gradebook for individual students? I am thinking of adding a 'penalty exam' column (just for purposes of having that column in the Gradebook), assigning that exam to just those students who cheated, and then manually entering a score of zero on that exam. It seems that this would give them an extra "lowest score" and force the system to count one of zero scores, yes?

Q2: However, how would one manage the divisor? That is, the total points available for the semester is 1355, and each exam is worth 200 points. If I make the penalty exam score column 'out of 200', the total points available is increased to 1555 for these students, and there is no way I know of to hide the divisor in the Gradebook Total. Conversely, if I make that penalty score column 'out of 0', then it seems this would amount to the penalty not counting against them (the same as a not-done extra credit assignment would).

Q3: A simpler solution might be to just manually calculate the students' final grade and override their scores in the Total Points column from within the Gradebook at the end of the semester. However, the system does not appear to allow this. If I were to export the final grades as a CSV file and manually change the Total column for these students, would the system keep those new totals when the file was imported?

Hi Kimberly Smith - You have posed quite the puzzler with this question, and I am probably not the best person to even start thinking about this, given my general ineptness with math, but I figured since your question has been out there over the weekend and it's interesting one, that perhaps this great Community had previously tackled a similar situation....and sure enough, it has. The great Stefanie Sanders dealt with a similar question to yours a couple of years ago, which you can see here: Dropping a Grade - But with Exceptions .

I fear that the bottom line for you is that you will have to remove that automatic rule from the assignment group and will have to manually go in and, as Stefanie suggests in her original answer, input a grade of EX for those students with the low scores that would otherwise be dropped. Yes, this will unfortunately require you having to constantly eyeball your gradebook, but I do not think there is another solution for this under these circumstances. Therefore, the students who cheated would still have their 0 for this quiz while the other students would have a low score "dropped" courtesy of the EX feature.

I was not aware of the EX option. It appears this could be quite useful. I wonder... if I were to add the aforementioned penalty assignment column for everyone, and then give everyone except those who cheated an 'EX' in that column, would this then avoid my having to remove the assignment group rule and update everyone's lowest score (now - and then monitor for all remaining exams)? It am hoping that this might effectively count the zero score in that penalty column for those who cheated (not an EX), but give the exception to everyone else (with an EX) - even with the assignment group rule in place. Also, rather than having to do this manually, will the 'Set Default Grade' option accept an 'EX'? In the case of adding a penalty column, most all of my students would be receiving an EX score.

I am not 100% confident about your being able to remove the rule, Kimberly, and here's why: Community member Kat Elgen discovered that including EX in an assignment group had Canvas dropping the EX grade! You can read about that here: Excusing a student from assignment *and* dropping the lowest score? However, further experimentation (by me) just now shows that this might have been corrected and that Canvas is now removing BOTH the EX grade as well as the (other) lowest score from an assignment group with a drop lowest score rule. So maybe it is okay now and is no longer occurring.

Thanks so much for this follow-up information! This may have helped me avoid creating an even bigger problem in the Gradebook. I will definately look into how this 'dropping EX' is currently working before trying to use it in my actual courses.

I just had this situation arise with a faculty member who doesn't want a zero grade dropped for a student if they simply didn't turn in a lab report. They have the assignment group set to drop the lowest score, so as described by you Kimberly, this faculty member was looking to have Canvas keep the zero and go to the next lowest score to drop. Since there are maybe 10 labs in the semester, in any of these columns one or a couple of students may need to keep a zero while the other's scores would be available to drop if it were their lowest.

I was experimenting and think that I may have found a way to tell Canvas to do this, without having to turn off the drop rule for everyone. I tested this in one of my Canvas sandbox courses and it appears to calculate correctly, but I do have some reservations about suggesting it to others and was hoping that some of the folks in the Community, like Ken Black, could weigh in with any thoughts about unintended consequences.

Here is what I did. I had a test student where I indicated a "0" for the grade I wanted to remain a zero and "50" for what would be the next lowest score. As expected, with the drop lowest rule in place the zero cell is dropped and shaded/hashed to indicate that score is being excluded. If I then go the 50, which is really what I want excluded instead of the zero, and enter "-50" Canvas warns me that I have awarded negative points but then recognizes that -50 is less than zero and drops it instead. Essentially I have accomplished what I want, the zero is maintained and the next lowest score was dropped.

Obviously if done there would have to be some communication with the student about what was done, but in our case the professor is going to be talking with the student about not dropping the assignment they just didn't turn in anyway. Since in our faculty's mind there is no good way to keep the rule as it stands, this may work in our situation although not ideal.

Any ideas on whether this should not be done? One downfall is that you wouldn't know until all of the assignments in the group are completed which one is the second lowest.

Thanks for the tag, Eric Werth, though as I mentioned earlier I fear math is not one of my specialties. But offhand, this sounds like a reasonable workaround. I tried it with a couple of phony "students" and it seems to be working as intended. In my case, I did a more conservative -1 score to input rather than -50, and that is indeed enough to drop it in the case of these two students, who also received a 0 on the final quiz:

Thanks Ken Black for bringing it to my attention that this conversation was taking place in two different posts. I like the workaround that you have created Eric Werth, and the suggestion by Ken to simply use a -1. I just tested it, with the same results, in a Sandbox course, and I am going to borrow this as a solution for instructors who need to indicate cheating but do not want to lose the desired action provided by the drop the lowest score setting.

Thank you both for checking! I made the feature request as well because while this may work, a way to indicate to keep a score in the gradebook would be more intuitive.

In my case, the faculty member has a 0 she wants to keep and a 40 she wants to drop. I thought about suggesting that she flip the +40 to -40 so it drops instead of the zero, but she could always look back and see that the dropped score was "40" to begin with. Thinking about it more, if she wanted to know what it has been she could always check the grade history, and -1 would be more conservative. Thanks again.